Add some colour

Forget naming a star, naming a colour is the new 'in' thing. Dulux's quirky new partnership with UNICEF allows the public to choose and name a colour from the 16.7 million that the average computer, tablet or smartphone are able to display. Whilst at first I found it quite tricky to narrow it down with all that choice, my friend is now the proud new owner of a colour I quite originally named 'teal'. And the clever part is that the price, for the novelty concept of owning a colour, is in that of a donation to UNICEF. So by adding a colour to the list of useless items you own, you will in fact be adding colour to other people's lives too.

Can we survive progress?

First off I think I should admit that there is a slight conflict of interest in this blog. It is a cousin of mine that is one of the producers for this documentary film.

However, with that having been said (and having only seen the trailor and read the reviews) it feels like a very timely (funnily enough they started work on it way back in 2005) and a badly needed documentary that will hopefully get some real airtime in the way that an Inconvenient Truth did in helping more people understand the direction we are currently heading.

It features some of the world’s great contemporary thinkers including Jane Goodall, Margaret Atwood, David Suzuki and Stephen Hawking. Inspired by Ronald Wright’s bestselling non-fiction book about societal collapse, this documentary explores the idea of “progress traps” in our modern world. At the moment we are on a trajectory that focuses, rewards and delivers bad progress - unsustainable progress. This documentary focuses on taking stock of where are and understanding what we need to change to allow us to make progress in a positive and sustainable way in the future.

The signs are good for its success. It has already taken part in the Toronto International Film Festival, and had its world premiere at the event on Sunday, September 11th. It has also been selected for the Vancouver International Film Festival and Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinema.

Fingers crossed that this helps mainstream some of the real issues business, government and society needs to address.

To see the trailer, go to:

http://kinetictrailers2.com/Progress/Progress_V9.mov

A boost for Breakfast

It’s been a good month for positive action by some of the UK’s food giants.

Mums – and nutritionists – will be able to say ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ with more confidence after Kellogg’s announced that it is reformulating Coco Pops to have less sugar, and it’s increasing the number of healthy options in its product range.

And this week McDonalds made clear its support for the government’s Responsibility Deal when it started listing calories on its menus – a very public recognition of its responsibility to tackle obesity (even if it did promote a storm in the blogosphere complaining that ‘nudges’ do no good to change behaviour).